Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Albums and Singles 82-87 CD Box

Has anyone heard this release? Some reviews are claiming that master tapes were used and these are not the horrible needledrops that were used by Cherry Red in the past. Still, I'm leery, since I seem to remember reading somewhere that all the Red Rhino master tapes were lost years ago.

 

Since this box is also on Cherry Red I wouldn't be overly optimistic. I don't know anything about this release though, but if it's actually good it'd be a nice investment.

 

Yeah, that's why I'm skeptical. Sometimes Cherry Red comes through but they often screw things up or take shortcuts. Just the other day I was excited to get The Passions' Michael and Miranda on CD. When the disc arrived, it was a thinly disguised CDR. Of course CR disclaims all responsibility for this. I guess they decided to cheap out and make CDRs of this album when the initial run sold out.

 

Yeah, still using needle drops: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry box set

 

Thanks for the link, didn't find that or see it before. I guess I better avoid this one.

 

Hey sure, it's hard to find stuff in the forum sometimes. It's really frustrating to hear there's no longer master tapes for some of these great releases.

 

Yeah, I have the first LP and Smashed Hits on old Red Rhino vinyl. Would love good digital versions but they'll never exist I guess. Keeping an eye out for Paint Your Wagon on Red Rhino LP.

 

I picked this box up a while back and I was disappointed with the sound. For Talk About the Weather, the box utilizes the same not great needle drop as all previous CD versions. Paint Your Wagon is also a needle drop and it's fairly bad sounding - you can hear gritty IGD on the tracks that are at the end of each side. So, yeah, to anyone who cares about that sort of thing, definitely avoid this box.

What's weird is that I thought the very first Paint Your Wagon CD was not a needle drop, so if the master tapes are gone, then why not track down that first CD and just use that for mastering rather than some worn out copy of the LP?

Cherry Red are wildly inconsistent. I just wish they'd put more energy into making better sounding releases for those albums where the master tapes are gone.

 

Probably because that was too much of a hassle for them. Same reason they don't use master tapes when they are available sometimes. For example, they did a CD release of the band The Colourfield which many people complained about. Just a few years earlier there was a Japanese CD release that contained tracks that were taken from proper master tapes. I was lucky to find a copy of that Japanese CD at a reasonable price instead of getting the CR edition.

 

Well, I just bought a perfectly good copy of the original/80s Paint Your Wagon CD on Discogs for $14 including shipping, which certainly wasn't a hassle for me! As far as CDs go, this is the one to get. It's a murky, muddy recording to begin with, but at least this original CD doesn't have the added gritty, distorted quality of the needle-drop version.

 

Was there any bronzing or CD rot on it? I need a copy of that also.

 

There's no bronzing at all on mine.

 

Edit - and no rot either, I forgot to mention.

 

What do people think of the Drastic Plastic Smashed Hits lp?

 

It's crap. Uses the same needledrop source as the Cherry Red CD and sounds horrible. Mine was also significantly off-center. I gave it away to a friend and ended up tracking down a Red Rhino version from the 80s. Sounds so much better it's in a different universe, no joke.

 

The UK original pressing of Talk About the Weather is drastically better than any CD version I’ve heard. This near-great album needs to be heard on vinyl.